Letters: Trump, Putin and election 2016

It is verbally, at least, with President Barack Obama last week threatening action of some sort against Russian Federation.

"Do I, in retrospect, wish they had done more?".

Stone is a former Trump adviser and longtime confidant of Trump who left the Trump campaign in August 2015 but has remained a prominent supporter of the president-elect. According to some, this tough talk follows years of accommodating and failing to stand up to Moscow.

The hacking campaign targeting Democratic Party officials and organizations in full campaign for the USA presidential elections reportedly aimed to discredit and undermine the United States as a global leader and hurt Donald Trump's rival candidate, Hillary Clinton. Obama also said he threatened "serious consequences if he [Putin] didn't".

Our presidential elections have now come down to about a five-state race with presidential campaigns ignoring voters in small states as well as those in large states that are deemed unwinnable by one candidate or the other.

"I think he would accept the conclusion if they would get together, put out a report and show the American people they are on the same page", Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Reince Priebus, who is slated to become White House chief of staff in Trump's administration, said on Fox News Sunday.

But the reset button didn't help in 2014 when, in spite of "stern warnings" from Obama, Russia invaded Crimea. Perhaps he will adhere to the policy direction followed by Republicans from Eisenhower, to Goldwater, to Reagan, to Bush, and stand up to Russian aggression. When it did the same to Ukraine, the United States and the European Union imposed tough economic sanctions on Russia that have done real harm to Putin, his allies, and the Russian economy. They cheered when Obama told Mitt Romney that he was delusional for embracing anti-Putin politics more appropriate to the 1980s. There is evidence the government of Russian Federation was behind leaks of information from digital communications involving top Democrats. What's the latest report on Syrian rebels? The Assad regime has since taken complete control of the city.

Only 29 percent of Americans are convinced "with near certainty" that Russian Federation was behind a series of election-year computer hacks that left Hillary Clinton playing permanent defense in the months leading up to the November 8 election. The reset was meant to reverse what Obama described as a "dangerous drift" in bilateral cooperation between the United States and Russian Federation.

Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta said there was evidence that Trump associates had contact with a Russian intelligence official and the website Wikileaks before USA intelligence agencies accused Russia of being behind computer attacks of Democratic emails, including Podesta's.

Trump has repeatedly called into question whether Russian Federation meddled in the 2016 election to help him win.

"Not much happens in Russian Federation without Vladimir Putin", Obama said. "This happened at the highest levels of the Russian government". It is essential to determine whether a foreign power set out to influence the November election - not only because the American public has a right to know but to fend off such cyber attacks and any manipulative attempts in the future.